“We ain’t gotta dream no more …”

The suffocating weight of sadness has eased, and coherent thought has finally returned. …

“Get back to work,” the head whispers with a tinge of condescension to the heart. “It’s just a TV show.”

Yes, just a TV show.

The discussions at work are long-since over. The reviews and tributes and excitement have all faded away, replaced by discussions of Iraq, an injured Tejano singer, Clinton and Obama, Spurs, freak crane collapses, the space shuttle and weekend plans. Our senior Wire analyst Bob Kolarik has moved on to “The Shield,” where I will soon join him. And so the news cycles and life cycles spin forward.

But my thoughts on those final Season 5 moments continue to coalesce, or perhaps coagulate. I contemplate the horrific, enthralling odyssey we’ve endured, gaze down the long, jagged, serpentine path we’ve traveled, and recall all the wonderful serpents that entranced us along the way. Sometimes I feel like the last guy at the party, emotionally exhausted but still buzzing with exhilaration. I’m still celebrating “The Wire” in the same way someone in 1944 relaxed in an empty Parisian cafe with a glass of red wine long after the American troops marched past — simply, silently, purely happy. “It’s over,” my mind tells me. “Don’t be pathetic.” And so I prepare to finish the glass and rise from the table.

But then an odd reality will give me pause. A coworker stops by, bright-eyed and dazed, excitedly telling me she’s just finished Season 1 and wants to see Season 2 as soon as humanly possible.

I smile at her, and I smile to myself: That cycle also continues. A generation of veteran “Wire”-lovers like me succeeded by a generation of crazy-brave novices like her, who have no idea what is about to happen to their lives, who are utterly unprepared for the emotional ravages to come.

They must be guided down this path, prepared for the body blows they will suffer throughout Season 2, the sweeping, staggering tragedies of Season 3, the everlasting heartbreak of Season 4, and the long, bitter, torturous descent of Season 5.

And so this party continues just a little longer.

– 30 –

I loved the ending of the series finale. I’ve read some sniffling and whining from critics and chat rooms over the closing montage. Get over it: A montage like that one was typical for the end of every season, and the montages were often among the high points of the seasons. Just recall Season 1′s ending montage, Jesse Winchester’s “Step by Step” bouncing us from one imperfect result to another: McNulty’s case gutted, the Barksdales hauled away, a new Homicide partner for the Bunk, Santangelo exiled to a beat assignment forever and a day, and Stringer Bell counting the money.

Some narrow-minded morons didn’t understand the lack of closure. That was Simon’s whole point. The process, the Game, the Department, the System — they all rolled along like great, black rivers, hissing and churning, swallowing the doomed and the foolish who dared challenge their natural laws, randomly transforming one landscape after another. The final image of the series was one of its most brilliant: No long, slow, romantic image of McNulty driving off into the sunset. No moment of final clarity. Just that glimpse of highway. Life zipping past this way. Life zipping past that way. Life went on and on and on.

I loved the cameos scattered throughout the last season, and particularly throughout the series finale. Beautiful Shardene from Season 1. Nick Sobotka from Season 2. Sergei and Avon Barksdale. Savino getting in the head what he had long deserved for getting Kima shot. Namond and Bunny. Novelist and former San Antonio Light staffer Laura Lippman at the start of the season, and her husband David Simon, playing himself in the newsroom, near its end. Ex-Mayor Royce. Randy from Season 4. And John Munch from “Homicide: Life on the Street,” who moved on to “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” It was a great reward to “Homicide” aficionados everywhere.

“He’s got the fire and the fury”

I’ve always credited “The Wire” for introducing me and re-introducing me to an amazing collection of music. The aforementioned Jesse Winchester’s “Step By Step” comes to mind. I remember wasting a summer on Kazaa looking for that damn song. Solomon Burke’s “Fast Train” from the end of Season 3 breaks my heart over and over again. Paul Weller’s magnificent “I Walk on Gilded Splinters” from the end of Season 4. “Head Sprung” by LL Cool J. Bossman’s “Ayo.” 50 Cent’s “In The Club.” DoMaJe’s stunning rendition of the theme song, “Way Down In The Hole.” J-Kwon’s “Tipsy.” Blake Leyh’s powerful “The Fall” was the most ominous music I’ve ever heard on television.

An added joy to life with “The Wire” was the long-overdue release of the soundtrack, “All the Pieces Matter.” You can read a review of the album by my friend and colleague Tunette Callis here. And check out this 2007 piece on the music used in the series. At the end are links to a dozen more related stories.

The writers

I can also credit the series for introducing me, someone who usually spends his time buried in books on the Roman Empire or the American Civil War, to a whole new set of novelists. Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, Rafael Alvarez: If you’re all driving new cars or living in bigger homes, I can tell you some of the money came from people like me who fell instantly in love with your sensibilities, your sweeping sense of modern, urban drama, and the tremendous tragedy you brought to your sophisticated tapestries of an American city. I’m slowing filling my bookshelves with your work, steadily devouring one novel after another. In one way or another, “The Wire” lives on in your work.

Pompous-prattle time

And to my literary-minded friends (you know who you are): As I’ve said before, I saw Simon’s path for us as nothing less than representative of the cycle of life itself, an ouroboros strangling but never entirely killing the civilization trapped in its coils. We saw the circular symbol everywhere: The tires that kids played with in the streets and that hid the drugs that doomed their lives. That ring passed from criminal to criminal throughout Season 4, symbolizing humiliation for one character and triumphant power for another. The rusted merry-go-round a devastated Nick Sobotka sat on in Season 3 as he watched his world burn to the ground. Michaels replace the Omars. Sydnors replace the McNultys. Campbells replace the Carcettis. The cycle is bigger than any one man or woman, yet it’s fueled by all of them, by their delusions of freedom and hope.

My friends have started to compare L.A.’s fictional Farmington District to the fictional Baltimore, in all their glory and depravity. They’re both right to do so and wrong to do so. “The Shield” is so effective because its main character is a single man damned for all eternity. We know it, his men know it, hell, even he knows it. But somewhere in the ruins of that napalmed conscience is still a small patch of determined hope that something good will result from the violence Vic Mackey has unleashed upon his world. It’s a hope we all share with him, even if we want him to someday pay once and for all for everything he’s done. But “The Wire’s” main character is not just Baltimore but America. Not a man but a civilization damned for all eternity.

Watching “The Wire” is like watching the Roman Empire crumble and fade away into history, century by century. Its episodes encapsulate the template of life going nowhere, accomplishing nothing. They’ve set down the margins of reality, those invisible walls we all built, from which we’ll never escape. We know how those lives will continue, and how that society will eventually end. The borders will never change — hope, genius, new leaders, smarter detectives, the Stringer Bells and Bunny Colvins and Jimmy McNultys of that world will never break through those walls. Like a colony of ants in a glass jar, nothing they do will change the fact that they’re sealed in forever.

Watching “The Shield” is like watching life in Pompeii as Vesuvius rains down death, destruction and doom from a sparkling blue sun-filled sky. Something big and bad is coming down at them. Like lightning strikes or molten rocks wiping out entire city blocks, whatever end “The Shield” depicts has to come hard and fast. “The Wire,” because of what it is, moved slowly. “The Shield,” because of what it is, moves quickly. Yet they both accomplish what they set out to accomplish, explore the Important Themes that elevate them above 99% of the rest of television history, and have never yet failed to entertain us.

That we can appreciate them both for their intellectual strengths and entertainment value makes their rewards to us all the richer and all the deeper.

Demotion?!?!

I’m currently an online editor, essentially a link between the Express-News and MySA.com. But I started my time in newspapers, including the Express-News, as a news copy editor. So I came away from Season 5 with no small amount of outrage when I realized that in the world of David Simon, the copy desk is the backwater, the cesspool, the Hades into which washed-up or insubordinate reporters — or principled city editors — are cast to spend their final days in eternal torment.

If the world could see what copy editors deal with every night, if they could see how many time-bomb mistakes/oversights reporters and earlier editors leave in their stories, if they could see how often a copy editor will save his/her newspaper from disaster or embarrassment or lawsuits … well, David Simon obviously had no regard for and no understanding of copy editors.

The copy desk is the last line of defense in any newspaper. It is an utterly thankless job with terrible late-night hours (or ideal hours, depending on your social life), mountains of detailed work to be done under severe time pressures, with virtually no margin for error, and with the added joy of waking up the next day to read criticisms of your decisions from people who never appreciate the circumstances in which you had to make them. From what I’ve seen in my decade of experience, copy editors are easily the most intelligent, passionate and interesting men and women in the building, the real core of the newsroom, who draw on dozens of different disciplines and talents to bring order to chaos every night of the year.